Where does the next infection begin?

Dorothy Crawford, a virologist, explains how microbes and people have evolved together, from the diseases that came with farming and cities to smallpox, plague, cholera and HIV, and what that history suggests about epidemics to come.

David Quammen travels with scientists tracking diseases that jump from animals to people, from Hendra virus in Australian horses to Ebola, SARS and the origins of HIV. Published in 2012, it anticipated a pandemic like COVID-19.

Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy, a journalist and a veterinarian, trace rabies through four thousand years of fear and myth, from werewolf and vampire legends to Louis Pasteur’s vaccine and outbreaks today.

Richard Preston tells how smallpox was eradicated and why samples survive in two laboratories, then follows scientists preparing for its use as a weapon in the years around the 2001 anthrax attacks.

Nathan Wolfe, a virologist who studies viruses in hunters and wildlife in Central Africa, explains how viruses cross into humans and argues for global monitoring to catch pandemics early. The book dates from 2011.